‘A world with fewer bombs and more ice cream’

I couldn’t be more confused by the intersection of bombs and ice cream. Also not really sure how Jesus gets in there. But Ben & Jerry’s co-founder, Ben Cohen, and Shane Claiborne, a Christian anti-war activist, are asking people to “imagine a world with fewer bombs and more ice cream.”

On Saturday night, the even of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the duo met for a one-night only event in Philadelphia. Here’s CNN’s painfully uninformative recap:

“If we’re going to have fewer bombs and more ice cream, we need to shift our budget to what helps people live instead of killing people,” Cohen said.

That article does little to explain the connection between Cohen and Claiborne, other than how they hooked up. This post from Claiborne at the Huffington Post doesn’t really help either. The Christian Post does a bit better:

“It’s about how we can be human beings and how our spirituality is tied up in taking care of people instead of killing people,” Cohen told The Christian Post. “I think the key to actually changing the direction of our country is for people that don’t normally work together to start working together and that’s what we are doing.”

Cohen, who is an activist as well, normally gives talks from a secular perspective. Claiborne, meanwhile, represents a faith perspective. But they hope supporters from both belief systems will come together for a common interest just as they have.

“I’ve been working on the issue of national budget priorities and shifting money out of Pentagon spending and into human needs. Shane had been working on the same idea from a spiritual perspective and working on stopping violence locally in Philadelphia,” Cohen said. “I come at it from a secular, rational perspective and he comes at it from a spiritual perspective.”

The fact that Cohen is Jewish and Claiborne is Christians reminds me of Craig Gross and Ron Jeremy‘s college porn debate tour. The difference, of course, is that neither of them are advocating more bombs.